


Face Up

by Trinary



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Cyberverse
Genre: Alien Culture, Body Horror, Don't try this at home kids, Dysphoria, Gen, Just friends who help each other swap out body parts, Medical Procedures, Nonbinary Character, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 12:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17100389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trinary/pseuds/Trinary
Summary: Thundercracker pounds on Acid Storm’s door. Even when he strains to hear, there’s no response. “Acid Storm! Are you in there?”Something clatters faintly inside, followed by a softer sound that might be a curse. Thundercracker thumps harder with the side of his fist and the door rattles in its frame, old bearings and older metal. Their ship was made relatively recently in the war’s history, which is to say it’s a rickety rustbucket held together with glue and hope, and should’ve been put out of its misery long ago.“Hurry up, already,” Thundercracker says, loud enough to carry, “Slipstream’s gonna make us scrub the engine filters if we’re late for patrol.”There’s another clatter. This time, the curse is louder. Acid Storm’s voice comes muffled through the door. “I’m putting my face on!”“Frag it, not again!”





	Face Up

**Author's Note:**

> /Slides in wearing cool sunglasses
> 
> So how 'bout that canon genderfluid Acid Storm, huh?

Thundercracker pounds on Acid Storm’s door. Even when he strains to hear, there’s no response. “Acid Storm! Are you in there?”

Something clatters faintly inside, followed by a softer sound that might be a curse. Thundercracker thumps harder with the side of his fist and the door rattles in its frame, old bearings and older metal. Their ship was made relatively recently in the war’s history, which is to say it’s a rickety rustbucket held together with glue and hope, and should’ve been put out of its misery long ago.

“Hurry up, already,” Thundercracker says, loud enough to carry, “Slipstream’s gonna make us scrub the engine filters if we’re late for patrol.”

There’s another clatter. This time, the curse is louder. Acid Storm’s voice comes muffled through the door. “I’m putting my face on!”

“Frag it, not again!” Thundercracker punches in the secret emergency override he won off Thrust in a game of Helex six-card. The locking panel beeps confusedly and he wrenches the door open before it realizes he’s not supposed to be there. It tries to close on him, but he shoves his way through. It only leaves him a little scraped. “Slipstream ordered you not to do that by yourself—Primus, _augh,_ that is so gross!”

Belatedly, Acid Storm’s hands fly up to cover the mechanisms exposed by the total lack of a face: actuators, bare irising optics without protective glass, teeth and tongue and wetly glinting mounting stubs where Acid Storm’s applied fresh heat paste. A nicked line dribbles glowing energon down Acid Storm’s neck to drip onto the floor. It puddles next to a disembodied faceplate. The faceplate stares at the ceiling, slack and dark-opticked as a corpse. 

“Get out,” Acid Storm says.

Pistons twitch in uneasy rhythm when Acid Storm speaks. Thundercracker resists the urge to spin right around and leave. He shudders and yanks the door shut behind him. “Why do you always do this to yourself?”

“I _said,_ get out!”

“Nuh-uh. The engines are even more disgusting than your exposed internals, and I’m not going down there.” 

Thundercracker advances. Acid Storm retreats, hands still raised. They hide just enough to make the imagining worse. Thundercracker reaches the dropped faceplate and picks it up—it’s a standard seeker faceplate, type two, unmodified. He sets it with the type one on the shelf by the berth. They’re extra creepy together, like something from Shockwave’s lab back before he got _really_ creative.

“You know you’re supposed to have a medic do that for you,” Thundercracker says.

“We don’t have a medic.”

“Nova Storm—”

“Nova Storm has basic protocols,” Acid Storm says, “she can patch leaks on the battlefield. I wouldn’t trust her with anything delicate.”

“The _Glorious Purpose_ came into range the other orn. We’re meeting up with them in a decacycle. _They_ have medics.”

“I couldn’t wait that long!”

Acid Storm’s tone is… Specific. An underlying anxiety somewhere between distress and despair. Thundercracker gives up arguing. There’s no use fighting past that point—not when the itch has wormed far enough under Acid Storm’s plating to make prying off a faceplate seem viable. Not when discomfort burns so hot it outweighs pain.

The itch affects them all, to one point or another. That’s the trouble with being a seeker, mass-made and mass-designed. The bodies never fit quite right. They’re all seams and awkward angles, the ghosts of what their sparks think they ought to be fitted into ill-matched shapes. They do what they can to live inside them. It’s worse for some than others. 

Thundercracker cycles his vents and regrets everything. “Let me help.”

Acid Storm hesitates. Green hands lower a fraction. “You’re not a medic.”

“No, but I’m not the idiot rooting around blind in my own substructure, either. Come over here.”

Acid Storm’s still for a long moment. Thundercracker waits. Finally, _slowly_ , Acid Storm edges closer. Bare optics peek through splayed fingers. Thundercracker looks over Acid Storm’s tools rather than think of what he’s about to do. The scalpels and screwdrivers are in surprisingly good repair. Only one has a chipped tip. Another’s smeared with energon. The culprit in Acid Storm’s wound, Thundercracker supposes. A slip at a bad angle. Acid Storm shouldn’t be doing self-surgery, no matter how superficial.

Next to the tools, the faceplates stand waiting. They’re similar as all seekers’ faces are similar, one broad-jawed with a sharp downward line under the optical glass, the other tapered and full-lipped. He’s seen these faces a hundred thousand times before, in reflections and otherwise. Custom faces are possible, but who has the time or money in the middle of a war? Anyway, a custom face is a good way to get your fellow seekers looking at you sideways. There’s solidarity in sameness. Starscream went custom, but Starscream thinks he’s better than everybody and doesn't count.

“Which do you want?” Thundercracker asks.

“The cute one,” Acid Storm says, instantly.

“You know that doesn’t mean anything, right?”

Acid Storm points to the one without makeup. Thundercracker picks it up. It’s the mirror to Nova Storm’s, narrow and soft-edged. The mouth gapes weirdly with no structure behind it, the expression one of vague, gormless surprise. Little scratches mark its edges where it’s been pried off and reattached many times. It’s cold, slack, and dead, and—no, _nope_ , Thundercracker refuses to think about it. Gross. It’s gross! He uses the fantastic power of his imagination to pretend he’s not holding a disembodied face and picks up a screwdriver.

“Sit.”

Acid Storm sits.

Thundercracker’s treated to the full, terrible sight of Acid Storm’s exposed facial mechanisms. He regrets everything, but harder this time. He’ll need a _lot_ of engex to forget this. How do actual medics put up with staring into people’s insides? He checks that all the mounting pins are clean, the hookups in place, the faceplate’s connectors unobstructed, and its backside free of debris. It wouldn’t do to trap grit in there, especially with Acid Storm’s ability to make it, well, _acid storm_. One failed seal and everything could corrode. That, Acid Storm really would need a medic to fix.

Swapping faceplates isn’t _difficult_ , exactly. It’s so easy even a seeker can do it, but it’s fiddly, tedious, easy to hurt someone, and also ew, ew, _ew_.

Acid Storm moves as little as possible while speaking. “Why are you helping me?”

“Told you, I don’t want to clean the filters.”

“You could’ve gone on shift alone and let me take the fall.”

Thundercracker snorts. “Okay, _one_ , like Slipstream wouldn’t just punish me for not finding you. Two, I’m not letting you maim yourself because you’re too stubborn to ask for help.”

“I can do it myself,” Acid Storm says, sullenly.

“Yeah, sort of. _Sometimes_. Remember a couple vorns back when you messed up and paralyzed half your mouth? You couldn’t eat without drooling. Nova Storm’s pictures are still hanging on the shame wall in the mess.”

“Like you’re any better at it.”

“Sure I am.” Thundercracker lines up the mounting pins. This is the tricky bit. “I used to do this for Starscream all the time.”

Acid Storm’s optics spiral wide. _“Air Commander Starscream?”_

“It’s not quite the same thing. It was never really the face, with him. It was... Other things.”

Just about everything, in fact. There’s little enough of Starscream’s original blocky seeker-self remaining, except in the outlines of him. The social status he’d clawed for, before the war and during, gave him the latitude to make changes. _Tweaks_. The casual gaze might guess he’s forged, to look upon him now—jagged-edged wings, a rounded cockpit, layered slats concealing missile launchers up his front—but even if Thundercracker hasn’t seen him in person in a vorn, he knows Starscream’s as restless in his own form as he ever was. Against that, swapping out faceplates seems a very simple fix. Would that Starscream could’ve gained his peace so easily.

Thundercracker wonders who helps him with all his mods and repairs now. Real medics, he supposes, rather than the fumbling hands of a seeker as unsure as himself. Maybe Skywarp, wherever he is.

“This’ll sting,” Thundercracker warns.

The faceplate slides in under Acid Storm’s nasal ridge with a hiss and pop. It catches on its pins. Seals lock in place and compatibility checks run; the light in the center of Acid Storm’s helm flickers, then steadies. The faceplate syncs with its underlying systems. Plates twitch and distort as it initializes, and a lip curls back in uncontrollable rictus. Coolant beads on the bottom ridge of Acid Storm’s optical socket and drips onto the floor.

“ _Ow_ ,” Acid Storm complains, wincing. The face moves smoothly.

Thundercracker holds up a mirror. Acid Storm touches the sharp angle of her chin where it’s framed between the jaw-points of her helm. It seems to soothe her to know it’s there. She tilts her head from side to side, and her expression eases; she leans back with a shivery little sigh.

“Better?” Thundercracker asks.

“Better,” Acid Storm says. “You know how it is. The other one just felt… Wrong. I had to switch.”

Thundercracker knows full well _this_ one will feel wrong, eventually. Acid Storm swings back and forth like a pendulum. At times, either face is suitable. At others, only one will do. Soon enough Acid Storm will think longingly of the square-jawed faceplate propped against the wall. The pronouns that now seem as welcoming as a hot oil bath will grate until they’re unbearable. She’ll find herself back here, prying off the vestiges of being _her_ and the pronouns with them, and the cycle will begin again.

Seekers don’t read normally to most Cybertronians: delicate and bulky all at once, cheaply pressed out of the foundry, hardly a difference between them but their faces—and of those, there are only two. If it has any benefit whatsoever, it’s that it makes changing one’s presentation uncomplicated. Everything else is pitch, tone, posture. Thundercracker knows for a fact that he, Acid Storm, Nova Storm and Slipstream came from the same casting. They all have a slight flaw on the outer surface of their left thrusters, the product of the mold being used and re-used so many times. If he adjusted his biolights and color nanites, if he hid his face, there would be nothing at all to tell him and Acid Storm apart.

Thundercracker sighs, steels himself, and regrets everything forever. “You’ll hurt yourself one of these days. If you want to switch and there aren't any medics around, at least come find me.”

“You’d do that?”

“Yeah, sure. So long as you buy me enough drinks to forget I had my hands in your face.”

Acid Storm blinks up at him. She seems at a loss. Decepticons aren’t known for their altruism. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say, _thank you, Thundercracker. You’re so smart, Thundercracker. What would I do without you, Thundercracker_ —”

Acid Storm snorts and kicks him. Thundercracker dances out of the way. They’re both grinning. Thundercracker’s reminded of Starscream a very, very, _very_ long time ago, settling into the first hopeful newness of change. With luck, it’ll go better for Acid Storm than it ever did for him.

Thundercracker washes smears of energon and internal lubricant from his hands in the basin by the door. Acid Storm’s had the foresight to keep solvent on hand. A good thing, too. The goop clings to Thundercracker's joints and forms a tacky film on his fingertips. He concentrates on scrubbing every fleck off while Acid Storm tips her face this way and that for the mirror, admiring herself. The untrained eye might call it vanity. 

“Just don’t leave it ‘til the last klik next time,” Thundercracker says, “this stuff always takes longer than you expect, and… Oh slag, we’re so late. Slipstream’s gonna murder us! Maybe if we fly _real fast,_ she won’t notice—”

 

Slipstream notices.

When they stumble over one another into the hangar bay she’s there, arms crossed, toe tapping. Her optics narrow at the sight of Acid Storm’s newly installed faceplate, but she says nothing about it. She just tells them to get their useless afts into the air to find any trace of the ark on this big dumb mudball planet; they obey as quickly as possible, and with the cool rush of wind over his wings, Thundercracker almost dares to believe they’ve gotten away with it.

When they dawdle back into the hangar after patrol, Slipstream’s waiting with two scrubbers and an evil smile.

The engine filters wear the accumulated filth of decavorns. Acid Storm, who’s never caught this punishment before, is so appalled that all Thundercracker can do is laugh. Getting the filters into anything like respectable shape takes joors. When they’re done they’re nearly indistinguishable: bodies streaked in soot, biolights so caked in grime they don’t shine. They could be a pair of unpainted newbuilds fresh off the assembly line. Nova Storm visits just to snap pictures and make fun of them. Acid Storm makes rude gestures, which only delights her.

More photos for the shame wall, to grace the space between drooling Acid Storm and the time Thrust fell into recharge dangling from the hangar rafters. Everyone will have seen them by the time third shift rolls around. Thundercracker tries to plant a big black handprint on Nova Storm’s pristine cockpit, but she tosses dust in his face. Thundercracker doubles over hacking out soot. This time it’s Acid Storm who laughs herself stupid.

Thundercracker doesn’t mind it as much as he might.

 


End file.
